This year, the number of mobile phones on cell networks is expected to surpass the Earth's population. "More people now own cell phones than actually have access to working toilets." James Meadow, a microbial ecologist at the University of Oregon. Hidden in the data is the reality that some people work on their phones...on toilets. If that grosses you out, consider this: "So it turns out we're just really leaky animals. We just, we leave our bacteria everywhere we go." Including, of course, our phones. Meadow and his colleagues took a census of the bacteria on thumbs and index fingers of 17 volunteers and on their smartphone touch screens. Overall, they Id’ed more than 7,000 types. Looking at just the most common bacteria, those that appear more than 0.1 percent of the time, they found an 82 percent similarity between the microbiomes of fingers and phones.